Altered just slightly from his cookbook Soups, Salads, Sandwiches to our liking
Time: 1 hour
Feeds: 3-4 people
Ingredients:
- 10 oz. fresh ricotta tortellini or tortellini of your choice
- 4 oz. guanciale, diced (pancetta is great if you can’t get Guanciale)
- 3 hot Italian sausages, removed from their casings and crumbled
- 1 yellow onion, finely chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1/2 tsp dried thyme
- 1 cup dry white wine
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 2 cups chicken stock
- 1 Parmesan rind, plus grated Parmesan for garnish
- 2 cups your preferred kind of bitter green, see notes
- Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper
Directions: Heat large Dutch oven over medium-low heat. Add guanciale and cook until crispy and fat has rendered. Remove from the pot and set aside until later. Crumble sausage into pot with the fat from the Guanciale and cook, breaking into smaller pieces with spoon, until browned and cooked through, about 5 minutes.
In same pot along with the cooked sausage, add onion and sauté until onion becomes translucent, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the garlic and dried thyme and cook for a minute or so until fragrant. Pour in wine to deglaze pot, scraping up any brown bits, and simmer until reduced by half. Add cream and simmer until reduced by half again. Pour in chicken stock and bring back to a simmer. Add the Parmesan rind, and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes. This is a great point to get the pot of water boiling for the tortellini to cook when it’s time.
Since Stew isn’t the biggest fan of greens, I like to sautée my greens separately and add them to just my bowl. You’ll just need to sautée them fairly quickly so they keep their integrity and some of their bite. If you prefer to simmer the greens in with the soup, just add them 5 minutes before the soup is done simmering. Also just before the soup is done, boil the tortellini according to package directions. Drain in a colander and add directly to the soup. Season soup with salt and lots of pepper. Garnish with additional Parmesan, the Guanciale and pepper.
Notes: You can have some fun with the greens that you choose for this soup! Matty uses rapini in his original recipe. They can be a little tricky to find so I’ve made this with kale as well as spinach. I think that broccolini would be a great addition as well. The parmesan rind is a great way to incorporate the parmesan flavor that he’s going for in this recipe without making a mess. The original recipe calls for grate parmesan added at the start of the long simmer and I found that, while it imparts great flavor, it gets all gloopy and sticks to the bottom of the pot. Really I just don’t want to clean that up!
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